“Judgments upon books are formed with even more haste and levity than judgments upon men. Writings are talked of without being known; and people take up an opinion for or against, in consequence of decisions which it would cost them some trouble to determine the source. These are evils which must be borne with patience, and the more so because they are common.”
Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
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Adolphe Quetelet 52
Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociolo… 1796–1874Related quotes
Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 22 (p. 387)

Explaining how all his novels were researched; quoted in his Guardian obituary, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/jun/25/guardianobituaries.books

Source: 1940s-1950s, Public administration, 1950, p. 75

Good Sense without God, or, Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas (London: W. Stewart & Co., ca. 1900) ( Project Gutenberg e-text http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/gsens10.txt), preface
Translator unknown. Original publication in French at Amsterdam, 1772, as Le bon sens ("Common Sense"), and often attributed to John Meslier.

Introduction : The Reason for the Examination
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)

Book 1, p. 10
Cosmotheoros (1695; publ. 1698)